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June 03, 2005

Gaps in understanding

"Our favorite hormone is a small molecule called auxin, known to regulate many aspects of plant growth and development through effects on cell division and cell elongation," says Indiana University biologist Mark Estelle, who has figured out how plants grow (Estelle Lab diagram, not captioned at the website, presumably illustrates the genetic networks active during auxin-induced cell growth.).

"In 1885, scientists discovered a plant-growth hormone and called it auxin. Ever since, its mechanism of action had been a black box, with scientists divided into warring camps about precisely how the hormone works," writes Sharon Begley in today's WSJ Science Journal (subscription only), a helpful follow-up to our post yesterday re the emotionally-charged evolution-vs-intelligent-design culture wars:

Yet biology classes don't mention the Auxin Wars. Again and again, impressionable young people are told that auxin promotes plant growth, when the reality is more complex and there has been raging controversy over how it does so.

Which brings us to evolution. Advocates of teaching creationism (or its twin, intelligent design) have adopted the slogan, "Teach the controversy." That sounds eminently sensible. But it is disingenuous. For as the auxin saga shows, virtually no area of science is free of doubt or debate or gaps in understanding.

There is no serious debate that evolution happens, only deeper questions (left to college and graduate school), such as whether it proceeds gradually or in spasms. "It's dishonest to single out evolution," Prof. [Sean] Carroll says, "when the very nature of science is to have unresolved questions."

Not at all disingenuous - given the highly charged temper of the topic, teaching the controversy allows students to make up their own minds: one can reasonably anticipate - for the most part - sensible results.

AHA! I've always said this, I've just never had it confirmed until today...

Yes, the purpose of science is to find the truth, no matter where it leads. And the truth, as it stands today, is that what science knows is dwarfed by what it doesn't know, and by what it thought it knew, but when it went further and looked some more, found out it didn't know to begin with. What the good scientist calls "unresolved issues".

I agree with Tuck. Until we absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt know the truth (note the setup of an impossible standard-Gosh I sound like a liberal--for shame!) which we never will, we cannot rule anything out, including ID.

Teach it as unsettled point, along with what science has found so far, and the caveat that science, and religion, have both been wrong before.